[salawat]

It comes from fundamental constraints on signal propagation, socially reinforced bias towards abstaining or following anyone who sounds like they have expertise, confict aversion, the huge overhead involved with actually becoming known enough by people to get past change aversion, and a general willingness to accept that the emperor is far away even though in today's world they aren't.

We're literally living in a time where "global" namespace changes are made willy nilly by people who don't even spend the time reading everything they may have an effect on by doing them, which is just accepted as being "impossible".

Further, the only people with the time/resources to engage in politics in a tangible way are pgobably the most disconnected people from the way of life for the polises they are shaping.

Human beings are ruthless energy optimizers (biological constraint), and the cognitive load of actually productive political engagement is absurdly high. Thus, people with literally anything else to do avoid it, or find it pointless, leaving only those so bereft of anything else to do to be the most impactful on that arena. Which in turn creates more for the disengaged to have to do to keep them from getting in the way...

It's a vicious cycle.